The rriksti rolled Alexei into a spare bunk. Jack shoved between them. He expected that there would be nothing more he could do for Alexei except close his eyes.
Alexei’s diaphragm fluttered.
“He’s alive!”
A rriksti pushed up beside him. Nene. It held out a basket containing what appeared to be a first-aid kit. Jack pawed through the contents of the basket. Frangible bullets. Frangible goddamn bullets, brought all the way from Earth. There were no words for it. The blood flow from Alexei’s wound looked sluggish, but internal bleeding was a dead certainty.
“Put pressure on the wound,” he begged Nene, miming what he wanted. The rriksti bent over Alexei and braced its thin white hands on his chest. Jack found a case of scalpels. He held up a wad of stuff that might have been bandages, or clingfilm, or God knows what—it had a rainbow tint in the gloom. “I can’t see a fucking thing in here,” he howled.
Someone came up behind him and slapped his headset onto his head.
“Thank you! I need light! Sterile gauze. Got to clean the wound …” Jack trailed off in despair. He had advanced medical training. He wasn’t remotely qualified to perform exploratory surgery. Especially not in the dark, without the right kit. “Where’s your medical technology?” he demanded. “I thought you lot came from the future. Haven’t you even got diagnostic imaging equipment?”
“It was all on the Lightbringer. We left in a hurry,” Nene said.
“Damn the goddamn future,” Jack said.
Another rriksti switched on a spotlight as bright as a fifty-watt bulb. That was probably hospital-strength lighting for the aliens. Nene snatched the rainbow-tinted clingfilm from Jack and pulled off small pieces. Balling them between its fingers, it packed them into Alexei’s wound.
“Is that stuff like QuikClot?” Jack leaned over to scrutinize what Nene was doing.
“We need to prevent further blood loss. Is this correct?”
“We need to stop the internal bleeding. That’s what’s going to kill him.” Stanching the external bleeding was a good thing, in theory. In practice, it would be like slapping a patch on the Titanic. The bunk’s thin mattress was already soaked with blood. More blood dripped, sparkling in the spotlight. Jack’s eyes stung. He realized the blood was actually coming from his own forehead.
He regained consciousness in a sitting position, slumped against a wall. He was still in the morgue, or hospital, or whatever it was. But from his new angle, he could see that the room was much larger than he had thought. It was L-shaped and now he could see down the long leg of the L. There must be half a hundred rriksti lying in the dim light, and all of them were staring at Jack with wide, dark eyes.
He used the wall to push himself upright. He shambled to the bunk where he remembered them putting Alexei.
Nene sat on a folding chair beside the bunk. “Don’t wake him,” it said via the headset that sat askew on Jack’s head.
Jack bent over the bunk. He listened to Alexei’s breath. He felt Alexei’s pulse. Slightly thready, but regular at about 60 beats per minute. He laid the back of his hand on Alexei’s forehead. Didn’t feel hot. Or cold. He could not understand it. Alexei should be dead. A semi-translucent bandage wrapped his chest, flattening the clotted chest hair to bloody snails.
“He is recovering,” Nene said.
“Did you do that Reiki thing on him?”
“Reiki?”
Jack flapped his hands descriptively. “The laying on of hands bit.”
Nene’s hair stirred around its shoulders. Its nostrils widened. Jack suspected these were signs of amusement. “Oh. No.” Nene held up its seven-fingered hands, palms out. “We secrete powerful antioxidants in our skin. They relieve certain symptoms. That’s all.”
“Ah.” Jack felt like a child who’d just been told there were no fairies. He had speculated—feared / hoped—that there was something magical going on there. “Wouldn’t do much for a gunshot wound, I suppose.”
“The other one shot him with a sub-lethal munition.” Nene touched its own long, sharp clavicle. “There is a fracture of this bone. Also, trauma to the soft tissues, blood loss, and shock. But no deep penetration. It will be some time before he regains use of the shoulder ...”
“Sub-lethal rounds!” Jack said in amazement. “How can you be sure? Sometimes internal bleeding’s hard to detect …”
“We can see it,” Nene said, calmly.
Jack waited for more information. Came there none. Maybe the rriksti did have some kind of diagnostic imaging equipment, after all.
He stared at Alexei for a while longer, trying to judge his pallor in the terrible light. Gradually, he realized he himself was feeling quite rough. Without another word to Nene, he returned to his patch of floor and slumped down. He tipped his head back against the wall and closed his fist around his rosary. He understood now why his father had insisted he take it. The world was closing in on him.
A slight movement of air across his face; a stronger smell of salt—without opening his eyes, Jack knew Keelraiser was there. The rriksti sat down next to him, mirroring his posture.
“Your friend is recovering,” it said.
“Yeah, Nene said. Thank you for treating him.”
“If we were on the Lightbringer now …” Keelraiser sighed, an actual sigh, blowing air out of its mouth. “If we were on the Lightbringer now, everything would be very different, and that is enough said about that.”
Jack gazed blearily at the rows of bunks lining the walls, stacked three deep. Other rriksti sat on chairs, holding the sufferers’ hands. “What is wrong with all these people?” After he said it he realized he’d called the rriksti people, because he’d begun to think of them that way.
“They are sick,” Keelraiser said.
“Well, obviously. Is it radiation sickness?”
“No,” Keelraiser said. “I lied about that. We cope better with radiation than you seem to. This crappy little moon is not much more dangerous to us than the moon of our own home planet, Imf.”
“Are you ever going to stop lying to me?” Jack said.
There was a silence. Keelraiser stood up. “Would you come with me, please?” it said.
Jack wavered, mostly because he felt too sick to move. In the end he decided he might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb. He followed Keelraiser through the dark, hot corridors. Keelraiser walked through a wall into the very same room where Jack had woken up.
This morning? Yesterday? He’d lost track of time. All he had for a clock was his hunger, which was now so intense it verged on nausea.
The room was now lit dimly, although it seemed bright after the murky corridors, and as hot as the rest of the shelter. Keeping the ‘alien’ comfortable had been a once-off, clearly.
“This is my room,” Keelraiser said. “The walls are painted with radio-frequency shielding material, as you would call it. We call it privacy. It’s a rare commodity around here.”
Jack gazed at the spartan set-up with new eyes. He realized he had woken up in Keelraiser’s own bed. There was no other.
Keelraiser unearthed two mugs from the mess on the card table, wiped them with its sleeve, and filled them with liquid from the sink.
“What’s that?” Jack said suspiciously.
“Water. There’s nothing else that is safe for us to give you.”
Jack drank the whole mug off. The briny taste scarcely bothered him anymore.
“I’m sorry,” Keelraiser said. It refilled the mug.
They sat down at the card table. A ventilation unit blew warm air on the back of Jack’s neck.
“Those people in the clinic are dying of malnutrition,” Keelraiser said. “Shiplord would kill me for telling you this.”
“Shiplord?”
“Eskitul.”
Shiplord. That must be what Eskitul translated as. Jack hadn’t been wrong: Eskitul was an important person around here.
“We are extremely short of certain metals, such as lead, cadmium, selenium,
arsenic, and others,” Keelraiser said. “It’s a vulnerability. I am giving it to you.”
Jack lifted the rosary hanging around his neck. “Others, including tungsten?”
Keelraiser stared at the crucifix. “Yes.”
“This saved my life,” Jack said. “The bullet hit it, fragmented. Don’t fucking steal it from me again.”
Keelraiser drank from its mug of water. It didn’t take its eyes off the crucifix. Grudgingly, it said, “What is it?”
“A rosary. Surely you’ve seen them on telly.”
Keelraiser shifted its shoulders in a way that suggested it had wanted a different kind of answer. “We do not understand your Christianity,” it said peevishly.
“Mate, it’s just a load of medieval superstition.” Jack suddenly understood how the rriksti could seem to be honest and yet lie. He had just done the same thing.
“Your other religions are easier to comprehend by analogy. On Imf, the dominant cult of Ystyggr—” that was what it sounded like— “is similar to your Scientology.”
Jack laughed out loud.
“I’m not joking,” Keelraiser said.
“Sorry, no; I know … That’s quite amusing.” Jack shook his head. Alien Scientologists!
“Ystyggr is the god of X-rays.”
“What?”
“Ystyggris worship the god of X-rays.” Keelraiser opened its mouth wide. Its hair danced. “Our planet is bathed in X-rays. It’s anthropologically obvious.”
Something frightening occurred to Jack. That high reading on his personal dosimeter. And Nene’s cryptic statement … we can see it … He leaned forward. “Can you see X-rays?”
“Yes,” Keelraiser said. It indicated a pair of dark dots under its eyes, which Jack hadn’t noticed before. “These are detector cells. They convert X-ray photons to visible photons.” Up close, the dots looked like black glass beads embedded in Keelraiser’s skin.
“Can I touch them?”
“Go on.”
Jack reached across the table and gently laid one finger on the bead under Keelraiser’s left eye. It felt like a fingernail. Smooth, hot. Delicate folds of skin around it twitched.
Keelraiser mirrored his gesture. Its heavy, dark brown fingernail rested on the skin just below Jack’s left eye. It moved its finger in tiny circles, pressing gently on the eyeball through the skin. The sensation begged for Jack’s full attention, which he refused to give it.
“I can see the bone in your finger,” Keelraiser said. “It glows.”
“I knew I’d end up glowing in the dark at some point.”
“You’re touching my eye. Of course I can see it.”
Of course, it was an eye, of sorts. It must be connected to a branch of the optic nerve. Jack’s voracious curiosity ebbed. He drew back. “No wonder I feel like shit. And there I thought it was just because I’d been shot.”
“You suffered several cuts of varying severity,” Keelraiser said uneasily. It folded its hands in its lap. “Nene treated them while you were unconscious. Does that upset you?”
Jack felt his forehead. The deep gash over his right eye was tender, but it seemed to be covered with a ridge of plastic. Some type of suture. “I’m not upset because of that. I’m upset because we’re soaking in X-rays. This so-called shelter is a hot zone. Isn’t it?”
“The X-ray environment is less intense than on Imf …”
“The roof of the manufacturing floor is made of metal. Isn’t it? I thought there must be an ice shield up there, but there isn’t. You’re letting X-rays in via Bremsstrahlung.”
“The manufacturing …? Oh, the shuttle bay.”
“Whatever the fuck you call it.” Jack folded his arms on the card table and rested his head on them. He and Alexei had thought this was basically a human-friendly environment. So much for first impressions. Food chock-full of metal. X-rays teeming in the air. He wondered what other nasty surprises lay in store. At this rate, he’d be dead before he had a chance to find out.
“There is no good way to tell you this,” Keelraiser said.
“Right on cue,” Jack said, without raising his head.
“The Dragon has been lost.”
At that Jack opened one eye. “Crashed it, did you?”
“The Lightbringer attacked it with a HERF. It suffered a full power shutdown during boost.”
“Yeah, that would do it.”
“I didn’t think they would do such a thing. I know they want to starve us into surrender. But this, this wanton destruction of resources! They’ve sunk to a new low.”
Jack sat upright. “Reckon they saw fit to deny us the Dragon, because they don’t need it anyway, now they’ve got the SoD to consume for resources? That’s what I think. And my friends are up there. Wonder if your Krijistal have any uses for human flesh? I recall Eskitul mentioned something about eating corpses. I suppose we can only pray that they kill them before eating them. Two of them are women, if that means anything to you. What a shit-show.”
“Rriksti do not eat corpses,” Keelraiser said. “Eskitul was referring to recovering fluids for hydroponics.”
“Oh, that puts a whole different spin on things,” Jack said sarcastically.
“In any case, we’d better not waste any more time.” Keelraiser stood up in its jerky unfolding manner.
“Huh?”
“We were going to take the Dragon into orbit to retrieve your ship and your friends. However, the Dragon is now a debris field. So we’ll just have to take the Cloudeater.”
“The Cloudeater being?”
“My shuttle,” Keelraiser said impatiently. “The one I showed you earlier.”
Jack forgot how sick he felt. He jumped to his feet. “Count me the fuck in.”
CHAPTER 33
The radio came alive. “SoD, do you read me? Over.”
Hannah screamed. Fortunately, she wasn’t pressing the transmit button at the time. She stabbed it. “Hello? Hello?”
“Hannah? This is Kate. I’m coming in. Over and out.”
“Roger,” Hannah said, her heart thumping like crazy. She had resigned herself to dying on board the SoD. Hanging out on the bridge with her squeeze bottle, she’d been trying to decide between committing suicide, and eking out the life-support resources as long as she could. She had transmitted a summary of her situation to Mission Control. They had begged her to hang in there. OK, she’d told them, I’ll try. It would be a fun challenge, and she could keep Earth posted on her unique n+1 experiment. How long can one woman survive in a spaceship designed for eight, when something alien to our solar system (clink—clink—clink) is trying to get in?
Now, all that fled like a bad dream. She floated upside-down to the consoles, right way up to the airlock, wringing her hands nervously. She’d drained her squeeze bottle while she waited for something to happen. Now she was on the unpleasant downward slope towards a hangover, but still drunk.
The hatch opened.
In floated a bizarre specter. Looked like a woman …
A naked, faceless woman with dead black skin, and a trunk that curled over her shoulder to a hump on her back.
Hannah screamed again.
“It’s me,” Kate’s voice crackled from the headphones floating in the air. “Watch this.”
The woman-thing pressed its fingers to the inside of its left wrist.
It changed color. Starting with the fingers and toes, the black coloration retreated, exposing pale human skin. Freckled forearms. Small breasts mottled with purple and yellow bruises. Ribs, black and blue. A shaggy strip between the legs. Kate was a natural blonde, and now she was naked. More bruises marred her face. She removed a slender breathing tube from her mouth and shrugged off a backpack about the size of a laptop.
“Behold, alien technology,” she said, tossing the backpack to Hannah.
Hannah mindlessly caught it. “You’re covered with bruises. What happened?”
“Aliens happened.”
“Your face …”
“Don’t e
ven tell me how bad it looks. They dislocated my shoulder, too. Hurts like hell. I need a drink.” She plucked Hannah’s squeeze bottle out of the cup holder. “Oh, Hannah. You’ve drunk it all.”
“You were gone for seven hours,” Hannah said weakly.
“I know I’ve got some clothes in here,” Kate said. She searched the drawers built into the aft wall, onehanded, pawing through their dead crewmates’ possessions.
“Where have you been?” Hannah turned the backpack—spacesuit?—in her hands, trying to see how it worked. “Where’s Giles?”
Kate found a t-shirt. It was one of Alexei’s, commemorating the 2019 Baikonur ‘Intergalactic’ Tennis Tournament. She pulled it over her head, and jack-knifed into a pair of underpants belonging to some dead man. “They’ve got him,” she said.
“Th-they?”
“The aliens.” Kate held Hannah’s gaze, unflinching. She was smiling with her mouth, but her eyes looked like she wanted to scream.
She’s lost her mind.
Whatever happened out there, it’s driven her mad.
Hannah swallowed. She knew you must not disagree with the mad, or challenge their assertions. She held onto the back of the left seat. “The Dragon’s gone,” she said eventually. “It just vanished.”
“It didn’t just vanish. They HERFed it.”
Kate settled into the right seat. Jack’s seat. She stretched out her bare legs, fitting her toes into the foot tethers that were positioned for Jack’s 6’4” frame. She cracked her knuckles, frowned for a moment at the consoles, and started pushing buttons and adjusting dials.
Hannah hovered. “Did you find any water?” she asked. She was as frightened as she’d ever been in her life. She’d have been curled in a fetal position if she hadn’t been drunk, which insulated her from reality to some extent, kept her tongue from sticking to the roof of her mouth.
“Oh, lots of it,” Kate said without glancing up. “Unfortunately, it’s all frozen. You ought to see it, Hannah. There are glaciers in that ship. Frozen lakes. Cargo holds full of ice. Pipes burst, pumps kept running, and then they blew a massive hole in the side of the ship. That not only sucked out all the air, but the intense low-pressure boiling froze all the water that was sloshing around. It’s like the Alps in there.”
Lifeboat: A First Contact Technothriller (Earth's Last Gambit Book 2) Page 23